Portfolio
Selected work
Projects across service design, research, strategy, facilitation, and organisational change.
Transforming an end-to-end IT governance experience
At a glance
Outcome / Impact
65% reduction in governance planning time
- Context
- Higher Education / IT Governance
- Role
- Service Designer
- Duration
- 5 months
- Methods
- Process Mapping, User Research, Contextual Inquiry, Workshop Facilitation
Challenge
At one of Australia's largest universities, IT initiatives had to pass through a central governance process covering cybersecurity, data, enterprise architecture, and other critical areas. Yet for teams across IT, the process felt confusing, ambiguous, and difficult to navigate. This led to project delays, strained collaboration between IT and business teams, and in some cases, stakeholders bypassing governance altogether.
Process
The project began by exploring both sides of the governance system: the teams responsible for oversight and the people navigating the process. Through process mapping, interviews, and contextual inquiry into how people interacted with governance forms and interfaces, we uncovered uncoordinated interdependencies between governance processes and systems that caused confusion and forced people to move in circles between steps. Furthermore, the governance journey was uniform for all projects, irrespective of size and risk, which caused unnecessary project overhead. Finally, the research revealed how technical jargon and unclear guidance made the process difficult to understand and complete for those without deep technical knowledge.
Outcomes & impact
We transformed the governance experience from a fragmented and difficult-to-navigate process into a coordinated and user-centred service. A new governance triage forum became the single entry point for IT initiatives, enabling governance owners to collaboratively assess projects and provide right-sized governance pathways based on project risk and complexity. Supported by a new digital platform, simplified processes, improved sequencing, and clearer language, the novel approach reduced complexity and made governance easier to understand and navigate. As a result, we reduced the time required to determine and plan governance activities by approximately 65%, enabling more IT initiatives to progress through governance in less time.